Car showed as low as -16 on the morning commute today. Glad I replaced the battery last winter. Even then on the drive home, after sitting outside all day it thinks twice before rolling over. The wind wasn't so harsh today, so -16 actual felt more mild for my brief period out doors.

The brutally cold weather that's killed 11 people and trapped millions in a historic deep freeze will finally let up by week's end -- but not before a treacherous encore.
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But the misery will slowly melt away Friday, with a warming trend that could give many Americans thermal whiplash.
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But the Windy City now has something other than a negative-41 wind chill to worry about: frost quakes.

Some Chicagoans were startled awake Wednesday by a series of large booms, CNN affiliate WGN reported.

"I thought I was crazy! I was up all night because I kept hearing it," Chastity Clark Baker said on Facebook, according to WGN. "I was scared and thought it was the furnace. I kept walking through the house. I had everyone's jackets on the table in case we had to run out of here."

That boom was probably a weather phenomenon known as cryoseism -- and dubbed a "frost quake." It happens when water underground freezes and expands, causing soil and rock to crack.

And Consumers Energy sends an emergency alert (to all 3 of our cell phones at 10:30 at night, scaring the crap outta us as 2 of the cell phones are less than a foot from me), telling us to turn our thermostats down to 65.

Had to google that to determine if it was a hoax, bad planning (someone would need to die for this one) or what. Apparently one of their delivery stations had a fire and is out of commission. They are rerouting but we could have potential outages so there is some legitimacy to their request.

A fire at Consumers Energy's Ray Natural Gas Compressor Station in suburban Detroit Wednesday shut down all gas flow from the facility. The station is responsible for about one-fifth of the state's natural gas storage supply.
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Several businesses, including General Motors in Flint, suspended operations Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at the request of Consumers Energy, the utility's CEO Patti Poppe said.

All facilities owned by the state are lowering their thermostats by 5 degrees, too, the office of the state Public Service chairman said Wednesday.
The cause of the fire wasn't immediately known. The utility said it hoped to partially restore the damaged compressor station this week.

We totally heard a frost quake yesterday. I was watching the dog outside and heard the loud boom. The dog actually lept a bit and looked where she felt the noise come from which helped me realize it didn’t come from the side of my house but in the yard.

It was a bit chilly yesterday while delivering stuff in the city by the bay... San Francisco. I can't seem to find the right layers to wear so I am not chilled when I'm outside, yet allow myself to sweat a little. A jacket seems too warm, a vest is not warm enough. Argh.

I ended up wearing the fleece jacket to keep my arms warm.

Then I found I lost my packable rain jacket. ARGH. At least it lasted two years... well almost two years (bought Feb 2017)

We lost power on Thursday morning just as I was about to get in the shower. Finally got it back Friday night around 5:30. The house temp had dropped to 45 degrees. We had just made the decision to bug out and go to my Dad's because facing a 45 degree (or colder) temp all night is daunting. I turned off the water and drained the toilets and bled the pipes and everything.

We got everything packed and were heading out the door to see utility trucks down the street. Twenty minutes later the house came back alive!

Thursday was a cold, rough night of maybe two hours sleep. No CPAP and worrying about the basement flooding with the sump pump out of commission was not conducive to anything but worry.

Over 200,000 people were without power in our region.

I'm starting a bucket fund for a generator. The previous owner plumbed the house for one during Y2K and it's really stupid for us not to have one.

Woke up to another 6 inches of snow this morning, making for just under 2 1/2 feet at my house in the past week. That's more snow that we've had in the last couple years combined.

Thankfully, I have some awesome neighbors who have helped me clean off the driveway and sidewalks. They've all been itching to use the giant snowblowers they bought and haven't been able to fire up until now.

If we get the 3-6" being forecast for Tuesday night, it will be the first significant snowfall of the season for us. However, as with our previous storms, this one is supposed to end in rain and rising temperatures, so it should all wash away within a day or two. Once again, I doubt that I'll be firing up my slushblower.

We're in for flooding. Bad flooding. It started raining tonight and only Monday wont see rain. So Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday , Saturday........and there may be more they think. At least 7.5" or rain and possible 12+" . In 7 days.

Bad news: My snowblower has another flat tire.
Good news: Last time this happened, I had to have a garage fix the stuck axle (with a blowtorch!) so I could remove the wheel. Taking it off this time was easy-peasy.
Bad news: The tire has a leaking sidewall crack. It's toast.
Good news: They sell snowblower tires on amazon, and a pair of them are only $36.
Bad news: The new tires won't be here until Friday, and there's a storm coming tomorrow night.
Good news: It's supposed to be another unblowable slopstorm. In a pinch, I can probably get one more use out of the leaky tire.
Next news: ???

Kraken wrote:Bad news: My snowblower has another flat tire.
Good news: Last time this happened, I had to have a garage fix the stuck axle (with a blowtorch!) so I could remove the wheel. Taking it off this time was easy-peasy.
Bad news: The tire has a leaking sidewall crack. It's toast.
Good news: They sell snowblower tires on amazon, and a pair of them are only $36.
Bad news: The new tires won't be here until Friday, and there's a storm coming tomorrow night.
Good news: It's supposed to be another unblowable slopstorm. In a pinch, I can probably get one more use out of the leaky tire.
Next news: ???

Funny thing is, this could really work! Man, this winter has been interesting to say the least. Anyone who says they would still prefer winter over summer at this point likely hasn't experienced this winter at its worst.

Funny thing is, this could really work! Man, this winter has been interesting to say the least. Anyone who says they would still prefer winter over summer at this point likely hasn't experienced this winter at its worst.

Maybe if we had a hard freeze. High temps have been mostly in the 40s all winter, with just a couple of cold snaps. Filling it with water would give me a tire full of water.

While I was fighting off another bout with bronchitis last January and MHS was still in major recovery from her appendectomy, we ended up getting a 4" snow shower. Neither of us were thrilled, but we both took turns clearing off the driveway and (especially) the sidewalk in front of our house (per HOA/city requirements). It took a good four times as long as it should and I was done putting up with all that shit. So I ordered a snowblower online (the one I had a low-level eye on for the last while had a $300 discount, so I justified the hell out of it). It took a while to arrive (it was a 120 pound box, ordered via ground shipping) and when it did it was beat to hell. The UPS delivery person made a note in *her* file regarding the state of the box and pointed out where various parts of the snowblower had protruded through the cardboard wall. I still took delivery because I'm an optimist.

Inside the box there wasn't one piece of fully formed styrofoam (all of them were broken to some extent) and the box itself had multiple slits where metal parts had broken through to the outside. None of the interior components remained in their individual packaging (it's an electric snow blower that came with 2 5-amp batteries, neither of which remained in their own cardboard boxes). The spare bits (i.e., the extra shear bolts) had bounced out the newly formed escape hatches. But I was able to charge the batteries (they didn't kersplode) and attach the handles just fine. However, when it came time to attach the metal skid shoes (formed out of 7/16th inch plates) it turned out that only one had maintained its original, undeformed shape. The other skid shoe had a roughly 25-degree bend in this beefy 4"-tall plate. I have no idea what could've happened in shipping to create such force, but it occurred to the right part of my package. Snow Joe (the manufacturer) kindly sent me all replacement parts (and even included a canvas snow blower cover, to make up for their poorly designed packaging). However...

The day after the snow blower arrived we were predicted to receive a good 4" of snow (which turned out to actually be 7" by the time it was done). And my spare parts were not going to arrive for another week. So I took to google to find out if I can safely operate a snowblower with only one skid shoe (they're the component which holds the intake housing off the surface you're snowblowing -- the back of the blower has wheels but the front needs little skis to slide through the snow). The process of googling led to to discover multiple types of skid shoes, including a snowblower forum (I'm not making this up) with an entire subforum of folks designing their own perfect skid shoes for their snowblowers (and especially their individual surfaces to be snowblown; for instance if you wanted to snowblow a gravel driveway, you want to ensure the intake housing rides higher off the surface than someone who has a concrete driveway, as you don't want the ejecta to be filled with driveway buckshot). I also discovered that skid shoes are attached pretty generically across all snowblower manufacturers and that Home Depot carries replacements for at least one in-house manufacturer's product.

So while the snow was coming down, I hit the local 'Despot' and found a set of plastic (PLASTIC!) skid shoes that were about three times as long as the metal ones sent with my snowblower. Since that was the only thing available to me and because I had a new thing that I wanted to use that day (and ensure it worked while I was still within the return window), I spent the dough and mounted those things on my snowblower. Worked great and I had an almost enjoyable time of clearing off the driveway. The 2-stage electric snowblower was more than up for the task and we had a clear driveway capable of getting us out to the doctor in case of an emergency.

I never thought I'd be a snowblower guy (a shovel has always been enough for me in the past), but with our declining health situations, I really don't want to be at the mercy of Mother Nature when push comes to shove and we have to be going somewhere.

Can you rig up a ski/skid of some sort (I'm thinking plastic milk bottle at the foot of a piece of wood) to replace the troublesome wheel? Just enough to get by once or twice until you can get the tire replaced? It wouldn't be great (especially if you only have one wheel acting as the locomotion for the machine), but still better than shoveling.

What about a can of fix-a-flat? Assuming it has standard valves, you should be able to fill the tire. I used it on my wheelbarrow tire. It didn't work 100%, but definitely kept it from going totally flat.

Being from Utah, I'm always amazed at the relatively small amount of snow it takes to completely cripple a major metro area like DC. About 1/4" (if that), and everything is shut down.

Which is just awesome, since I flew here for four meetings today.

DC really is a city of snow pussies, which is odd since snow isn't exactly rare there.

I was there once when they had 7". The airline called me earlier that afternoon and encouraged me to catch an earlier flight since they were anticipating the airports to close by 7 pm. I was on the last flight in. Driving toward Silver Spring down George Washington Pkwy, I felt like I was in some horror movie where everyone is raptured and there are abandon cars all over the place - all facing different directions. No people, just dozens and dozens of cars. I had to drive like I was slaloming down a ski slope to get around them.